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Post subject: Have you seen a fender jazz with 3+2 tuners?
Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2009 8:26 am
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there's a guy that has this posted on craigslist, claiming he paid over 1200 originally. I am unable to find a fender jazz with the 3+2 headstock like this one anywhere online. Any thoughts on this? He said the serial was N 038826. That suggests an american fender I believe, but I'm suspicious.

http://austin.craigslist.org/msg/1485044394.html

Thanks!


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Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2009 1:24 pm
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It pays to be suspicious! This though is a legitimate Fender Japan bass. The model name was PROPHECY. Fender Prophecy basses look a lot like today's Ibanez basses and there is a perfectly good reason why. They share some designers and both were made in the same plant.

Technically the basses were designed by the Heartfield division of Fuji Gen which was established in 1989 as the R&D brand for test marketing new concept instruments. Fuji-Gen's plan was to see what the Heartfield team came up with and them incorporate any really good ideas into already successful instruments. Heartfield was not expected to break sales records, just push the envelope. The Prophecy was an excellent high end Japanese instrument and very different from anything else to bear the Fender decal up till that time.

The Prophecy line was sold under at least three names that included Heartfield and Hearfield by Fender and the ones for export to the USA got full blown Fender decals starting in July of 1990 through June of 1993 at the Fuji Gen plant in Yokahama. This state of the art facility still produces today's Fender Japan products like the STING bass, '51 Reissue P-Bass and the Aerodyne series of guitars and basses. The Fender labeled Prophecy line was discontinued due to poor sales as it seems people didn't mind improvements to Precisions or Jazzes, but just didn't accept the Asian flavored Fender.

The four string version had a 2x2 tuner headstock while the five string version had a 3x2 headstock. These had ash bodies, three-piece maple necks with rosewood fingerboards & Japanese electronics with Asian hardware such as you find on Ibanez basses. This experiment in a modernized style bass was perhaps too severe a departure from Fender's traditional line and was dropped. Some people say they were a limited edition, but if they had sold enough of them they would not have been so limited. The demise of the Prophecy was also partly due to some economic issues because the dollar was weakening against the Yen making the Prophecy more and more expensive in the USA. It started out as a midrange priced instrument but became much more costly by late 1992 when it was selling for near what a USA instrument would cost. Buyers were happier spending $100 more for a USA Fender. By 1993 the Prophecy line just wasn't selling at the price it cost to make them, so the Prophecy was abandoned. There is no doubt they were well made.

The basic Prophecy design concept still lives on today in the Fender family of brands as the Squier MB (Modern Bass) series basses, however the quality is not as high as during the Fuji Gen days.


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Post subject: dude
Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2009 1:55 pm
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that is the single most informative answer to a question that I have EVER received on a message board. Thx a million!!


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Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2009 7:19 pm
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Every Prophecy bass I've ever played was amazing. While they look like an Ibanez of today they actually sound better. If I ran across a really clean one, I'd buy it. I never tried the 5-string version though. So I can't vote on that.

George Blanda and Jay Black were on the Heartfield design team along with about a dozen other people closely associated with the best basses built in the last quarter of the 20th century by Fender, Gibson, Ibanez, Sadowsky and Yamaha.

Again, today's version of the Prophecy, the Squier MB series, is made in Indonesia and the quality just isn't as good. To be completely honest it is sort of like the difference between a Fender American Standard and a Squier Affinity version. I'm just glad Squier didn't title their version the Prophecy series too, because the Prophecy deserved better than what the original design has now evolved into.

The Japanese Prophecy of the early 90's was a VERY FINE instrument. Light, best available tone woods in Asia, easy to play, a wide range of tones and quiet stock electronics that didn't need upgrading out of the box. The best brains in bass of the day designed the Prophecy. I can name about 8 of them right of the top of my head.

The Fuji Gen necks, all of them including the ones coming out today, are truly fine and often the very best thing about a Fuji-Gen product.

Yeah I'd buy it for the price they are asking. The closest thing to one of these available today is a Cort Korean neck, which is where the high end Ibanez work went after Fuji-Gen. Again, make sure it is clean and stock and in good shape. I think they are really good studio instruments and possibly the most cutting edge Fender bass every marketed. Truly a labor of love by the leading bass brains of the day that failed not because it wasn't good, but because it was different. It is sort of the Tucker automobile of Fender basses. A really good bass with lots of different features from what Fender was offering at the time.

What Fender learned from Prophecy was that people want upgrades but they want them to be in a package that looks like a Precision or a Jazz. So that is what you can expect from Fender for a while to come. I'm truly surprised that the Jaguar Bass made it out of R&D to marketing after the Prophecy.

If it came down to the choice of a Jaguar or a genuine Fender Prophecy, I'd take the Prophecy everytime.


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